Regulation and activity of CaTrk1, CaAcu1 and CaHak1, the three plasma membrane potassium transporters in Candida albicans.

Wild-type cells of Candida albicans, the most common human fungal pathogen, are able to grow at very low micromolar concentrations of potassium in the external milieu. One of the reasons behind that behaviour is the existence of three different types of K+ transporters in their plasma membrane: Trk1, Acu1 and Hak1. This work shows that the transporters are very differently regulated at the transcriptional level upon exposure to saline stress, pH alterations or K+ starvation. We propose that different transporters take the lead in the diverse environmental conditions, Trk1 being the "house-keeping" one, and Acu1/Hak1 dominating upon K+ limiting conditions. Heterologous expression of the genes coding for the three transporters in a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain lacking its endogenous potassium transporters showed that all of them mediated cation transport but with very different efficiencies. Moreover, expression of the transporters in S. cerevisiae also affected other physiological characteristics such as sodium and lithium tolerance, membrane potential or intracellular pH, being, in general, CaTrk1 the most effective in keeping these parameters close to the usual wild-type physiological levels.

Trk1, the sole potassium-specific transporter in Candida glabrata, contributes to the proper functioning of various cell processes.

Candida glabrata is a haploid yeast that is considered to be an emergent pathogen since it is the second most prevalent cause of candidiasis. Contrary to most yeasts, this species carries only one plasma membrane potassium transporter named CgTrk1. We show in this work that the activity of this transporter is regulated at the posttranslational level, and thus Trk1 contributes to potassium uptake under very different external cation concentrations. In addition to its function in potassium uptake, we report a diversity of physiological effects related to this transporter. CgTRK1 contributes to proper cell size, intracellular pH and membrane-potential homeostasis when expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Moreover, lithium influx experiments performed both in C. glabrata and S. cerevisiae indicate that the salt tolerance phenotype linked to CgTrk1 can be related to a high capacity to discriminate between potassium and lithium (or sodium) during the transport process. In summary, we show that CgTRK1 exerts a diversity of pleiotropic physiological roles and we propose that the corresponding protein may be an attractive pharmacological target for the development of new antifungal drugs.